The present invention pertains to a handle assembly for a door or door panel wherein identical handle parts are disposed on both sides of the door and are interconnected with each other to form the handle assembly.
Handle assemblies which are required to be disposed for grasping from both sides of a door or door panel are widely known. Manual grips or handles are required for some doors, such as residential garage doors, on both the inside and outside of the door for use in lifting the door. This requirement is provided for sectional upward acting garage doors, in particular, to avoid causing persons to use the door section pinch points to move the door up and down.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide a handle assembly which is mechanically uncomplicated, easy to assemble and use and requires few parts. It is also desirable to provide a handle assembly which has a high degree of commonality of parts and may be adapted to be used with doors having a relatively wide range of door panel thicknesses. It is to satisfy the above described needs and desiderata that the present invention has been developed.
The present invention provides an improved handle assembly, particular adapted for use with sectional garage doors and the like, which handle assembly may be gripped from inside as well as outside a door to manually move the door.
In accordance with one aspect of the present invention, a handle assembly is provided which is particularly adapted for a sectional door panels and the like and which includes two handle parts and two fasteners wherein the handle parts are of identical construction and the fasteners are of identical construction. The handle assembly is particularly easy to install and may be installed on door panels of different thicknesses. In this regard, the handle parts are each formed with opposed legs, an interconnecting grip portion and wherein one of the legs includes an elongated reduced cross section shank portion which projects through the door panel and is received in a bore formed in the other leg of the other handle part. In this way, the handle parts may be assembled using elongated screw type fasteners. The handle cannot be disassembled by removing a fastener from only one side of the door panel.
The lengths of the shank portions and the depths of the shank receiving bores in the respective handle parts may be adapted to use the handle with door panels of different thicknesses or the length of the shank and bore portions may be dimensioned such that only minimal deflection, if any, of the panel parts is possible when the handle parts are assembled to each other to prevent over-tightening of the handle parts and bending or plastic deflection of the door panel parts. The handle parts may include shank portions extending from both legs of the handle to aid in locating the handles in spaced apart bores on a door panel and to provide for reducing the height or depth of the handle with respect to the plane of the door panel. The handle assembly may also include elongated tubular spacers extending between and sleeved over the shank portions to limit the bending or deflection of door panel parts.
In accordance with another aspect of the present invention, a molded plastic handle part is provided for a handle assembly, particularly adapted for use as an inside outside handle assembly for a sectional garage door and the like.
Those skilled in the art will further appreciate the advantages and superior features of the invention upon reading the detailed description which follows in conjunction with the drawing.